'71

3.5 Stars (out of four)

'71 was, for me, both great and a bit disappointing.  What I thought would be one type of movie turned out to be another.

The story takes place in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1971.  This was a fairly hard time in what the Irish call "the troubles."  In 1971, the IRA's long-standing conflict with British took a very bloody turn.  In response to a robust crackdown on IRA activity, the Catholic-based IRA greatly expanded their insurgency campaign against British military and law-enforcement officers.  To complicate the matter, the IRA began to split over goals and tactics.  On the one hand, the IRA old guard was violently clashing with the younger and more violent Provisionals.  Both were also clashing with Protestant-based UK loyalists.  This violent soup centered on Belfast and turning it into a war zone separated by armed camps.  The story opens with a new, young British recruit sent directly to Northern Ireland on his first assignment to augment the beleaguered forces already there.  In his first outing, he is separated from his unit in a demonstration that degenerates into a riot and is accidentally left behind.  What follows is a harrowing journey through unknown territory pursued by Provos trying to kill him.  From one terrifying experience to the next, he is being pursued murderous Provos, undercover British officers trying to find him, and stuck between all manner of conflicts where he can't distinguish friend from foe.  Will he survive?

I was disappointed by this film as it pulls a bit of a bait and switch.  Due to the acclaim it has been receiving from several film festivals, I thought it would shine a little light on 'the troubles," particularly for those who don't live in the UK or Ireland and comment on the nuances of that particularly violent time.  It does this in a sense, but in the end, it is really just an excellent chase movie comparable in scale and tone to The Warriors.  Like The Warriors, it has a very dark, almost psychotic undertone where evil is everywhere for our protagonist.  Any character is a possible angel or killer, which creates a pervading sense of dread over the whole film.  But unlike The Warriors with its hyperbolic kitsch, this movie is not messing around for kicks.  There are real consequences that scar everybody in the story, and no one comes away clean and whole.  Therefore, it "feels" more real and is easier to swallow the premise and harder to reconcile with yourself at the end.  There are no "good guys" or "bad guys," only victims, which belies a more European and less American sensibility.  There are no winners, just degrees of losers, which makes this film a superior thriller to most.  Not a kid's film, but recommended for adults who want more thoughtful, somewhat escapist entertainment which gives you something to chew on once the lights come up.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

3.5 Stars (out of four)

This film is a true rarity:   A worthy sequel that lives up to, and maybe surpasse its very good predecessor.  This movie can proudly take its place alongside such films as The Godfather, Part Ii, The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight.

For those of you who did not see its predecessor, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, you will be a little lost.  The original is about a young, Indian hotelier, Sonny Kapoor (played with relish by Dev Patel), who is working to create a hotel designed to be a retiremen community in India in a delaptitated, old building.  A group of elderly british tourist on a group tour who are shocked at the condition of the building.  While the film starts with standard comedy tropes, it gradually becomes in a thoughtful discussion about loss as we grow older and the regrets we carry from life.  But then, through the resolution of their stories (not all happy), it turns into an optimistic note as it says there is always time for second chances as long as you gran for them.  It warns us not to be too tentative as the clock is always ticking and one day, it will be too late.

As we open the next film, Sonny is trying to convince a corporation of retirement communities to invest in his hotel so he can improve and expand to another building.  The chain agrees on the stipulation they will send an undercover inspector to assess the hotel to base their decision.  At the same time, Sonny is preparing for his marriage to Sumaina (the beautiful Tina Desail).  The combined stresses of the preparations for the wedding, his future in business, and the appearance of an old rival is ruining everything in the process.

This movie is such a breath of fresh air.  While it is, on the surface, a comedy of errors, in the end, it continues the theme of second chances; something we can always use from time to time.  The supporting cast is basically every great British actor over the age of 70, and there is not a dud in the bunch.  Each of their stories is just as engaging and each of them are superb.  But the particular standout is Dev Patel playing Sonny.  He is a living ray of sunshine, and even when he screws up, which is often, his Candide-like optimism is so endearing and infectious, you just can't help but love him.  You actively root for him to come out on top, no matter how ridiculous the situation, and you know he will.  It is impossible not to like him, and his naïveté would be irritating to most people, on him it is totally endearing.  This story is the perfect blending of comedy and drama, sacrificing none for the other, and leaves you with a feeling of delight in your heart that doesn't dissipate once the movie is over.  It is a wonderful film for all and I highly recommend it.

HIDDEN GEM SERIES-The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire De La Peur)

4 Stars (out of four)

I am creating this sub-series to Folken Movies, the Hidden Gems Series, and it is designed to highlight really good movies you may have missed for whatever reason.  The idea is to introduce you to movies that I think you may like but have not seen.  Some will be old, some new.  Some obscure, others blockbusters.  Some will be very different, others comfortable.  Some may be for all ages, others strictly for adults.  Some may challenge your sensibilities, others may be pure, escapist entertainment.  Some may be silent classics, others color talkies.  Some may be arthouse films, others Grindhouse films.  But in all cases, I tried to find interesting movies that I liked and think you may find enjoyable, especially if you're looking for something to watch that's new or off the beaten path.  They are all hidden gems to me, hopefully I helped you find a new, favorite movie or open you up to some of the amazing art that is all around us.  So, without further ado, GEM NUMBER 1:

The Wages of Fear was the Die Hard of its day.  It had great acclaim in Europe, being the first film ever to win the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) in the Cannes Film Festival AND the Goldener Bär (Golden Bear) in the Berlin International Film Festival, the top prizes in Europe's two most prestigious film festivals.  Even after heavy censorship due to perceived anti-American themes in the movie, it was one of the biggest successes of 1953.  But for non-über geeky cinefiles, most people today have never heard of it.  So, as the first in my new series of hidden gems, I would like to highlight this outstanding movie.

The film opens in a very small, impoverished town in the middle of Mexico, which seems to be the end of the line for people with no money and nowhere to go.  Mostly, they are refugees from the ruins of Europe of post-WWII.  There are Germans, English, Italians and French citizens, all with no money and trapped in a small dusty town in the middle of nowhere.  In the photo below, it looks like they're all in jail.

An American oil company is the biggest and most desired employer in the area because the high-paying, but extremely dangerous jobs.  Because of everyone's desperation, the company ruthlessly exploits them for dangerous duties for cheap wages without much consideration for their safety (sound familiar?).  When an oil rig explodes and burns out of control, killing 14 of the men in town, the oil company hatches a plan to cheaply extinguish the fire.  It hires two teams of drivers to drive two trucks filled with EXTREMELY volatile nitro glycerine with no safety equipment, including shocks for the trucks.  The route is long, filled with treacherous, bumpy, narrow and mountainous undeveloped roads.  One wrong bump or too much heat will kill them instantly, indeed, the trip is seen as suicidal.  The rest of the film is a race against time and obstacles to get to the site quickly to extinguish the fire.  What follows is a nail-biting suspense film over who will live, crack under pressure, or die.

One can see this movie casts a long shadow over thrillers that came after it, redefining the edge-of-your-seat thriller ever since.  While it is a little slow by today's standards, once it gets going, it is quite a ride.  There are a lot of unforgettable, sometimes horrifying images that sear into your brain and must have been a quite a shock for 1950s audiences.  It was just as hard on the cast as well.  The two leads both contracted conjunctivitis because of a scene they had to film covered in oil.  Vera Clouzot, the female lead also got very sick during the production. 

 The film went way over budget and had to have a multi-month break in the middle for winter (it was shot in the south of France).  Also, as a bonus, if you see the entire, uncut version of the film, it is an interesting European criticism on American expansionism.  It is this criticism that resulted in most of the cuts.  As the movie is European, specifically French, at a time when communism and the Soviet Union were ascendant, it would not surprise me in the least if there was at least some anti-American communist sensibilities sprinkled in by the filmmakers.

The first 30-45 minutes are very expository, existential and quite sexual for early 1950s America.  A lot of this was also cut in the original American release.  

There is also a lot of discussions of motivations which add context to the desperation the men who volunteer must have felt, knowing it is essentially a suicide mission.  Because of this exploration, it makes the film so much more satisfying and complete compared to the vacuous fare of recent blockbuster films.  These new films are essentially one, long chase scene, all flash and no substance.  Movies like The Wages of Fear show that a thriller does not have to be dumb.  Intelligent and thoughtful themes can be portrayed against an entertaining backdrop without losing their substance.  I wish more films were like this, thoughtful but exciting affairs that aren't dumbed down to a PG-13 audience filled with kids and prudish adults, not just sound and thunder.  And while there is occasionally superior fare like Gladiator, what we mostly get it FOUR Transformer movies and counting.

The Imitation Game

3 Stars (out of four)

The Imitation Game is a tad schizophrenic.  It can't seem to decide whether it wants to be a historical biopic or an issue film.  While the film is ostensibly about the genius Alan Turing, the inventor of the modern-day computer, as well as his accomplishments of leading the team that broke the German ENIGMA code in World War II, it also keeps comin back to the fact that he was homosexual.it hangs like a cloud over everything and yet the movie is oddly dismissive of it throughout.

The film opens with Turing been arrested in the 1950s for indecency and he is under interrogation.  During the questioning, Turing is very cagey with a lot of his answers, particularly with his personal and job history during WWII.  His evasive answers pique his arresting officer's curiosity, thinking Turing may be a Communist and starts digging.  This investigation sets up the story that follows.  It portrays Turing as eccentric, arrogant, unempathetic, cruelly logical and ultimately unparalleled in his brilliance.  He is responsible for picking the team that will assemble the machine that breaks ENIGMA, designs and builds the computer that he keeps improving until his death, and breaks every rule of convention to do it, causing in powerful allies and enemies.  It also gets him noticed by the precursor of MI5, Britain's internal security service.  When the machine breaks ENIGMA' it is Turing who realizes that they have to be exceedingly careful how they use the information lest they tip the Germans off that their code has been broken.  He must come up with a formula that breaks down what information they will used based on cold calculations as to the strategic importance of the informationa, thus condemning thousands of people to do when they could not use the information.  All of this stress had a horrible effect on him, combined with him carrying the secret that he was gay which could send him to jail if he was discovered.

So, as I said before, the movie can't decide what it wants to be.  At times, it is a straight, interesting biopic and at random times becomes an issue movie like The Dallas Buyer's Club or Milk.  Ever since the landmark Supreme Court cases on gay marriage, there has been a full-court press in Hollywood to socialize the cause of gay rights to a still very conservative public by shoehorning in gay characters in almost all pieces of entertainment.  In the case of this movie, even though they make it clear in the beginning that Turing is gay, the transitions to his past feel abrupt and/or clumsy.  It starts as an issue movie, switches to interesting historical drama, then issue again, over and over.  If the filmmakers' intent was to say the fact that Turing was gay had no impact on his accomplishments, that's fine.  But the big emphasis at the end was that in order to avoid jail, he was chemically castrated, and shortly thereafter committed suicide.  This ending felt tacked on, out of place with the rest of the film like an afterthought.  To me, it minimized the impact overall and does a disservice to both stories, making both of them fall a little flat in the end.

Jersey Boys

3.5 Stars (out of four)

So, full disclosure.  I have never seen the stage play or read the book Jersey Boys is adapted.  So I wasn't sure what exactly to expect.  I had heard a lot of good things, but had heard that the movie was disappointing.  I also thought the play was a musical, and it is to an extent, but it is really just the music of The Four Seasons at various performances and the story is not really told through song.

So, those of you who don't know, Jersey Boys is a biopic of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, the group responsible for a lot of big hits in the 60's and 70's including: Walk Like A Man, .  Specifically, it focuses on mostly the troubles of the group.  Everything about the movie was delightful, all the performances were first-rate.  The only problem I had with the movie was that if you are familiar with VH1's Behind The Music specials, you have seen this story over and over and over again.  Group of talented people people get together, start singing and struggle until they find their rhythm, get their first big hits, ride the high wave of success, only to come crashing down in the end.  So, as far as story goes, it was a little predictable.

But what I really liked about the film was the storytelling device. Specifically, all four members would break the fourth wall at times to explain internal motivations, whether personally or collectively.  Therefore, it had a fairly intimate feeling, as if you are being told the story by an old pal rather than omnisciently watching events and drawing your own conclusions. Like a book, it gives you access to inner monologues and thoughts, and therefore a richer story.  It gives you more context and thus, a richer story.  This is an entertaining storytelling device to me, but it can be badly used.  This movie gets it just right.  Add on top of that that the movie is being narrated from several points of view, where characters will even correct previous stories so the re ord is set straight (at least for them).  This multiple-perspective storytelling is also powerful because, going all the way back to Citizen Kane, the same story or character is vastly different depending on who does the telling.  Like the tagline says, "Everybody remembers it how they need to."  The final denoument where each character sums up their final thoughts is great.

A humorous personal side for me was how much rock music has changed (in my opinion, for the better, but no judgement), but how little the situations change in show business. It seems outside of Weird Al Yankovich, every performer who has ever played in front of an audience has had a lot of drama in their lives.  I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.

To Have And Have Not

2.5 Stars (out of four)

"You know how to whistle, don't you Steve?  You just put your lips together and blow."

Thus one of the great Hollywood romances was born.  Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall met for the first time on this film and fell madly in love.  Even though he was sixteen years her senior and both were married, the stars aligned for these two in a romance that lasted the rest of Bogart's, and Bacall's, lives.  But a lot is made about this being the film where they met and where the persona of Bacall was born, but how good is the movie, really?

The answer is...not very.

And the sad part is, it has all the ingredients to make a great film, and sort of did, leading to one of the greatest made four years later, that is, Casablanca.  Casablanca and To Have Or Have Not are basically the same movie.  You have an attractive screen couple, or at least real chemistry on the screen between the two costars that is absolutely electrifying.  A first-rate cast all at the top of their game.  There is not a dud in the bunch unless you count Walter Brennan's drunk, but even he is good at it.  You have an adventure/mystery/romance film directed by Howard Hawks, who was one of the best at this type of film.  You have a story written by Ernest Hemmingway adapted by William Faulkner, two of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.  You have amazing dialog and performances where what is not said is just as important as what is said.  The power of the spoken word and nuance is lost in the Big Guns-Big Tits world of Michael Bay and James Cameron today.  You have Bogie playing his best archetype, a deeply wounded man from a relationship that has made him angry and cynical at the world until he meets the woman who is his match.  A man who would not do an unselfish thing for anyone who ends up being the reluctant hero fighting against the Nazis.    These are all crowd-pleasing storylines.

And the most frustrating thing of all is that nothing is really followed up.  The movie slowly builds to a heroic climax and then...doesn't.  What looked to be a tale of derring-do to free a French Resistance figure out of Devil's Island never happens. Our heroes get caught before the plan can happen, so they run to Haiti to escape the Vichy officials at St Martinique.  Now, to be fair, Faulkner had said to Hemmingway he always wanted to adapt any of his stories, no matter how bad it was.  And unfortunately, he picked Hemminway's worst.  Also, like all things creative, stories are not created in a political vacuum.  The original story took place in Cuba and involved corrupt officials in a smuggling ring.  American officials, not wanting to offend our ally (it WAS 1938, after all) and not wanting to take on Nazi Germany, pressured the studio to change the locale and basic story.  So any plot went by the wayside.  And it's too bad, too, because this movie has real potential.  It is interesting and would have been great.

But as it is, we are left with art imitating life, where the real characters, like their roles, are falling in love.  And that electricity is palpable on the screen.  It really comes through, which makes it more of an interesting historical document rather than an interesting story.  It was not only the beginning of Bogie & Bacall, but also the origin of Lauren Bacall's smoking persona.  This was her first movie, she was a model before she was discovered.  And while it helps that she was incredibly beautiful, Hollywood is full of incredibly beautiful people.  What set Bacall apart was her presence, "the look," as some called it.  During her first day on set, she was absolutely terrified and despite Bogart trying to help her relax, she could not stop shaking.  She found the only way to stop it was to tuck in her chin and look up, setting up the smoldering stare for just about every other femme fatale to come along (see below for an example), proving once again, that some of the best inspirations were by accident.

So, in the end, the movie is interesting for the beginning of many great things things to come, not the least of which was Casablanca four years later.  But on its own, it's a bit substandard and ham-handed for all the great tools it had, a tragic missed opportunity.  Not to say it was bad.  Far from it.  But it could have been great and falls way short of that.